Jean Bassal
Jean Bassal | |
|---|---|
Jacobin Club Montagnards |
Jean Bassal, 12 September 1752, Béziers – 3 May 1802, Paris, was a French Deputy, a
Championnet
he attempted the geographic and political reorganization of the Kingdom of Naples along republican lines.
Biography
Member of the Congregation of the Mission before 1789 and vicar of
Legislative Assembly, where he displayed his radical opinions. Reelected to the convention, he voted for the death without appeal or suspension, during the trial of Louis XVI
.
Bassal was named with
Bernard de Saintes and Jacques Reverchon, mission Ain, Jura, Côte d'Or, the Mont-Terrible and Haute-Saône by decree of 17 August 1793, to quell the royalist uprisings
there and to secure the borders with Switzerland and German states.
Appointed at the beginning of
William Wickham) of the royalist insurrection of 13 Vendemiaire Year IV. As secretary to the Directory's Consul in Basel, he was reported to have spied upon English agents in Switzerland.[2] Bassal was also charged as a government commissioner to inspect the post offices of the border with Switzerland (Huningue, Porrentruy, Besançon, Pontarlier, St. Claude and Versoix
).
Reform of Naples
In 1798, he went to Naples with
Championnet. There, he sought to take charge of the reform of the departments, reorganizing the elective and governmental landscape in the French model. The Neopolitans objected to his seemingly arbitrary organizational methods.[3] Bassal's project threw existing hierarchies into confusion, and became an unworkable disaster. These measures were part of broader efforts taken to secure the revolution in the Kingdom of Naples along the republican lines established in France, which included guaranteeing the national debt.[4] However, he was accused of causing trouble between the civilian and military commissioners and of seeking to benefit from the squander of public funds. Subsequently, he returned to Milan
when Championnet was recalled to Paris. Napoleon's coup of 30 Prairial Year VII (18 June 1799) saved him from further prosecution. He retired to Paris, where he died in 1802 in obscurity.
References
- ^ Michael L. Kennedy, The Jacobin Clubs and the French Revolution, 1793–1795, Berghahn Books, 2000, p. 28.
- ^ Annual Report of the American Historical Association, Letters of William Vans Murray, (7 December 1798), U.S. Government Printing Office, Smithsonian Institution, 1914, p. 491.
- ^ Vincenzo Cuoco, A Historical Essay on the Neapolotian Revolution of 1799, University of Toronto Press, 2014, pp. 202–203.
- ^ John A. Davis, Naples and Napoleon: Southern Italy and the European Revolutions, 1780–1860. Oxford University Press, p.p. 83 and 93.
